I’ll have the art, please

I’m standing in the gallery at the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge, really trying to put Eric Holowacz—the organization’s new executive director and this month’s cover subject—to the test.

You’re at your first crawfish boil, and you bite into a piece of corn that has soaked up so much spice there’s a bonfire in your mouth!

Like a tent, his face folds in on itself. He winces and squints in pain for brief moments between the laughter.

You just saw Prince walk down Third Street!

He leans forward, giddy, childish, a flash of light ricocheting across his enlarging eyes.

You’re struggling to come up with your next great idea.

At this, between clicks of the camera, Holowacz pauses. His hand finds his chin slowly, and the Steve Jobs look-alike gazes long at the rafters above.

God bless him. He is game. But this stance is odd. Not so much uncomfortable as it is foreign. It is the pose of someone forced to act like he stumbles when generating fresh ideas, not the one of someone who actually shoulders this pervasive problem.

Imagine Shaq pretending to not be able to dunk.

It is, perhaps, the first time Holowacz has attempted to make the gesture in earnest. I can’t imagine this energetic import, recently relocated to Baton Rouge from a similar post in Australia, grasping at the ether for inspiration.

The guy can’t help it. Throughout 225‘s photo shoot, Holowacz brainstorms.

Smile. Breathe. Idea. Repeat.

By the time we wrap the shoot, he has zoomed through mobile art studios, artist colonies and artist-themed pop-up dinners. He’s made it all the way to library cards.

Seriously, who thinks about library cards?

The new face and voice of our city’s artistic atmosphere does.

He is all over library cards.

“They shouldn’t just be this outdated thing,” he tells me with both passion and precision, as if making his case to the Library of Congress. “They need to be keys to new things.”

Holowacz wants to transform the ordinary, single-service library card into a gateway to discounts on local performances and a connection to interactive artistic experiences throughout the city.

I suggest he draft Baton Rouge artists to design a variety of these cards. Holowacz looks at me approvingly.

Try to keep up.

Access is important to the South Carolina native. Art, he believes, should be for everyone: the elderly, children, professionals and the poor.

Starting this month, if you have $5 you’ll be able to purchase original artwork at Baton Rouge Gallery thanks to the Arts Council’s new Art-o-mat®, a converted cigarette machine stocked with small, locally made creations by talented artists.

The Art-o-mat isn’t so much a simple idea as it is an elemental and fundamental one.

It erases an economic barrier. It invites everyone to appreciate the unique joy of witnessing creative expression, to experience it and take ownership of it.

That’s what Eric Holowacz is here to do—to invite. And us? Our task is to respond, to experience this wild culture of ours, and yes, to own it at last.